Words: Andrew Alderson
Design: Paul Slater
Dame Yvette Corlett, nee Williams, leans forward atop a dais at Helsinki in 1952 to receive a gold disc from Sir Arthur Porritt – later to become Lord - the country’s first athletics medallist from 1924.
Her joy is palpable, having leaped to glory in the long jump and become the country’s first female Olympic champion.
“The New Zealand supporters came down to the track and carried me around shoulder-high,” she told the Herald in 2016, before removing the beaming disc from its bespoke box.
“To see the flag go up and hear the anthem played, that was the highlight of my career.”
No New Zealand podium success at the 1948 “Austerity Games” in London meant her medal was the country’s first since Jack Lovelock stormed to 1500m glory at Berlin 16 years earlier.
Corlett died aged 89 in 2019.
When the Herald interviewed her before the Rio Games she had already endured several health setbacks.
A brain abscess was removed a decade prior, which slowed her speech. She had recovered from bowel cancer and heart surgery. Each time she fought back stronger.
In post-World War II New Zealand, Corlett’s sporting story was a spur to battlers in a fledgling welfare state yet to fully benefit from the 1950s boom in living standards.
As she sat in her armchair unfurling pristine pages of scrapbooks and photo albums, a current of nostalgia flowed through the room. It surged when her hands clasped the wooden pegs her father crafted to mark her run-up.
After two no-jumps, Corlett moved one of those markers back six inches, as per the empirical measurement of the era. If her third attempt overstepped she would have exited the competition. A hemisphere away, New Zealanders willed on their prospective champion through radios in the heart of winter.
“I had to register one,” Corlett said. “But I feared I would jump again and everybody back home would be so disappointed.
“Fortunately my third jump was legal, which put me fourth. The Russian [Aleksandra Chudina] led, but the top six could have another three jumps. On the fourth jump I hit the board. The judge put out his [illegal] red flag initially, then changed it for the [legal] white.”
Her 6.24m arc, a centimetre short of Fanny Blankers-Koen’s world record, led the competition. Corlett would break that mark with a 6.28m leap at Gisborne in February 1954, but this was needs-must.
Composure was crucial in trying circumstances. Darkness is rare in Finnish summers due to the northern location, but the firing of a human cannonball at 11pm each night further limited the prospect of sleep for her and roommate Jean Stewart, the bronze medal-winning backstroker and fellow Otago Girls’ High School alumna.
Corlett also faced the scenario of practising while a couple of Russian Cold War caricatures, in black trench coats and hats, scribbled notes pitside.
“I thought ‘I’ll show them what I can do’ and jumped as far as I could.”
Conversely, Corlett saw little of her Soviet rival outside the competition. Chudina refused to get changed with the rest of the female long jumpers.
Strained knee ligaments threatened to hinder Corlett’s cause. Britain’s physiotherapist had to be found because New Zealand didn’t have one.
“The sand was at a lower level than the pitch as I ran through the pit. The knee became quite sore so the team chaperone contacted the English masseur. He came over and it was much easier after that.”
The pictures tell Corlett’s story best. After her victory she looks demob happy and, at 23, in the prime of her life.
Yvette Williams, centre, recieves her gold medal alongside United Kingdom bronze medal-winner Shirley Cawley, right, and USSR silver medal-winner Alexandra Chudina.
Yvette Williams, centre, recieves her gold medal alongside United Kingdom bronze medal-winner Shirley Cawley, right, and USSR silver medal-winner Alexandra Chudina.
Adult destinies can often be traced to pivotal childhood moments.
Corlett was born Yvette Winifred Williams in Dunedin, the daughter of Tom and Winnie. Her brother Roy became a Commonwealth Games decathlon champion in Kingston in 1966 and a respected sports journalist.
Father Tom offered a hint at the family’s pedigree as a grenade-throwing champion in the Australian army during World War I. Mother Winnie was a highland dancing champion. Meld in the siblings’ competitiveness on the front lawn in anything from hurdling to wrestling, and a champion recipe emerged.
“Life was different,” Corlett says. “There was no TV or cellphones to distract us so we had to make our own fun.”
You don’t have to be Hercule Poirot to decipher some of the other clues to her career path.
“My grandad had a neatly manicured flower garden and we used to try jumping across from one side to the other. I remember him saying ‘don’t ruin my flowers’ so you had to get the jump right. They also had a big pear tree which I loved to climb.
“When I was about 10, I also used to run from the doorway to our bedroom and leap onto the top bunk.”
In 1948 Corlett met fitness instructor Jim Bellwood at an athletic training school in Timaru. He had survived three years in a German POW camp before rehabilitating in England and returning to New Zealand with his Estonian wife Emilie.
“I went to learn the basic elements of different events, then fortunately they came to live in Dunedin,” Corlett says. “On Sundays we’d go to St Clair and St Kilda. Up on the sand dunes we’d practise the hitchkick, leaping off the top.”
When the Bellwoods moved to Auckland, Corlett followed, staying with Aunty Ruby and Uncle Alan in Devonport. She used their spare room to train.
“There were no gymnasiums in those days, so I couldn’t do weight training, but Jim suggested lifting concrete blocks. I made sandbags to hook over my feet so I could lie on my back for leg raises and work on my stomach muscles.”
Army boots were also worn in training schedules because “when they came off you could almost fly”.
Corlett had not heard of the Olympics until the Otago Daily Times sports editor Teddy Isaacs suggested it as an option in 1948. After packing her self-sewn uniform, she flew to Helsinki, where her life changed forever.
Corlett's career was short by modern athletic standards. She came to prominence at the 1950 Empire Games with her long jump victory, went to her solitary Olympics, and then won the shot put, discus and long jump at the Empire Games in Vancouver. The latter two results were achieved simultaneously because the Duke of Edinburgh was late. Events were delayed in his ‘honour’.
Corlett’s homecoming memory from Finland is indelible during those halcyon days.
“I stayed in London for six weeks after the Games and competed in different countries. When I got home I thought it [the fanfare] would have died down. Suddenly, I was on my way to Western Springs for a big welcome and a fireworks display.
“My mother and father drove to Auckland to pick me up and we gradually made our way down the island. We were invited to Parliament House to meet the Prime Minister, and, as we headed through the South Island, lots of children and parents stood roadside waving flags and giving me bunches of flowers.
“Finally we arrived in Dunedin where they had organised an open top car to drive down the main street lined in bunting. At the town hall I dreaded making a speech. I preferred performing on the track and in the field.”
Corlett became a household name but, as an amateur, opportunities to capitalise on her fame were limited.
Efforts to name a rose after her and get a health stamp printed were jettisoned. A 90c stamp was later commissioned before the 2004 Athens Games, but an Yvette Williams ‘rambler’ or ‘climber’ never eventuated because of the New Zealand Olympic Committee’s policy around endorsements in that era.
After marrying Buddy Corlett in 1954, she retired before the Melbourne Olympics. The pair met when working at Auckland’s YMCA, had four children, and were married until his death in 2015.
This year, at the Tokyo Games, Dame Yvette Corlett’s legacy will endure on the dais.
When those anointed Kiwi women lean forward to accept their medals and celebrate their achievements, they can thank their pioneering predecessor for leaping the frontier.
Yvette Corlett with a photo of her jumping in the sand hill at St Clair Beach, Dunedin with her coach. PHOTO / GREG BOWKER
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